


Scared to Death

by neversaydie



Series: God Only Knows [4]
Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Brothers, M/M, Muteness, Sign Language, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-02-03 01:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1726076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl is different, in this town. He's nothing like the shy, sweet guy that Rick knows and loves. He seems like the kind of guy Rick's dad would tell him to avoid, the kind of guy Rick would probably idly think he'd end up arresting a few years down the line. He seems tough, dangerous. </p><p>In this town, Daryl's more like Merle than Rick is even slightly comfortable with. </p><p>[in which Rick meets Merle, Daryl hates Georgia, and Rick starts to realise what growing up Dixon entailed.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scared to Death

The phone call goes about as well as expected.

Rick does most of the talking. Daryl manages to stutter out his brother's name and that their dad is dead, but then he clams up and just shakes his head at Rick before he hides his face in his boyfriend's shoulder. The wound is still too raw, he can't process it enough to talk yet, even with Merle cursing up a storm on the other end of the line. Daryl grips Rick's arm with white knuckles and he feels the silent plea against his skin.

Okay, if that's the way it needs to be, that's the way Rick will do it. He can take it from here.

"You still listenin' you mute piece'a shit?"

Despite his attempts to placate the elder Dixon, Merle just ignores Rick's reasonable tone and keeps berating his brother. Everyone reacts differently to grief, Rick guesses. It just seems the way Daryl's family reacts to most everything is to take it out on him.

"I fuckin' told you what'd happen if you left him alone! Goin' off t'your faggot-ass school! This is your fuckin'-"

"Merle, that's enough."

Rick breaks into the rant like a steel shutter coming down between the brothers. He can hear Daryl hyperventilating next to him, hear Merle's unsteady, angry breathing over the phone. At least he got Merle to stop, so he counts the silence as a victory even if he wishes he could do something to stabilise his boyfriend's shaking.

"You need to calm down so we can work this out, alright? The circumstances ain't important, what matters here is that your brother is hurting and he needs you to help him out."

It's a moment before Merle sighs over the phone and the grip on Rick's arm loosens, just a little. Another tiny victory.

"He ain't talkin', huh?"

"No, he ain't." Rick doesn't even try to make Daryl answer, knowing the pressure will make him even less likely to speak. Merle sighs again.

"He needs to come see me. I'll send the visitin' letter, should take a couple days. You come with him."

Daryl nods reluctantly and Rick translates the _okay_ for Merle. The elder Dixon just grunts a goodbye and hangs up, leaving Rick to wrap his arms around Daryl and try to give him something to hang on to.

"Looks like we're goin' back to Georgia."

Daryl nods. Looks like they are.

*

Merle signs surprisingly well.

Rick feels a hot prickle of shame in the back of his neck when he realises he'd been expecting Daryl's brother to be nothing more than a lumbering asshole. He watches them talk in the visiting room, neither of them making any effort to translate out loud for him. Merle's thick fingers are just as dextrous as his brother's in carving words out of the air, if a little slower. He stops and thinks a few times, like he hasn't done this for a while, and Rick supposes he hasn't.

_So who's this asshole?_

He jabs a thumb at Rick, who isn't sure if he's supposed to look away or pay more attention.

 _My friend_. Daryl signs back. Merle raises his eyebrows and repeats 'friend' with a disbelieving look on his face. Daryl blushes and looks away, and Merle just snorts.

"They ain't lettin' me out 'til the funeral." Merle finally addresses Rick, who he's pretty much ignored until now. "I got some money left in my account that Daryl can get to, should be enough t'cover everythin'. You gonna help him arrange shit?"

He hears the tiny glimmer of anxiety under the words, and it's oddly touching. Even if it's basically a demand, and a gruff one at that, Rick hears the plea hidden inside it. _You gonna help him talk?_

"Yeah." Rick nods without hesitation, and a little tension leaves the stiff line of Merle's stooped shoulders.

"Good. Don't fuck it up." He grunts, looking between them both.

He pulls Daryl into a rough hug as they leave, and Rick sees his boyfriend's muscles relax a fraction. It must be Merle's seal of approval, because Daryl doesn't shake on the way out to the car, and he starts talking when they're safely locked inside. It's a whisper, and it's in an oddly flat tone, but Rick will take what he can get.

If it's Daryl doing better, he'll take it any way it comes.

*

Things are different, in this town.

Daryl shies away from Rick when he stands as close to him as usual, and his boyfriend quickly learns to keep his distance. Daryl walks differently, and Rick finds himself watching, fascinated, as he draws himself up to his full height and looks people in the eye when he walks by them. He has a way of communicating in shrugs and grunts here that suggests he's just not bothered enough to speak to anyone, not that he can't. He won't even sign to Rick unless they're behind closed doors.

Daryl is _different_ , in this town. He's nothing like the shy, sweet guy that Rick knows and loves. He seems like the kind of guy Rick's dad would tell him to avoid, the kind of guy Rick would probably idly think he'd end up arresting a few years down the line. He seems tough, dangerous.

In this town, Daryl's more like Merle than Rick is even slightly comfortable with.

"Stops people messin' with you."

Daryl presses tighter into Rick's side in the hotel bed when his boyfriend asks him about it, after a couple of days of watching him be mini-Merle. The twin bed sits unused across the room. No matter that Daryl takes care to mess it up each morning, he always sleeps next to Rick.

"Ain't real safe t'be gay an' a mute 'round here."

"I get it, I-"

"Nah, listen. I ain't ashamed of you, okay? I don't want you thinkin' that. I just wanna keep you safe."

"I know, I understand." Rick thinks he's starting to, anyway. He tugs Daryl in closer and tucks him in under his arm like he can shield him from the world, and it's a sign that the last few days are all a front that Daryl curls into him and hides his face in his shoulder. "You're doing the best you can, sweetheart. And you're doing so good, okay? With everything."

It seems like that's exactly what Daryl needs to hear, because he breathes out slowly and presses a kiss to Rick's neck, a brush of lips right over his pulse.

"I hate it here." He mumbles, quietly, as if the room will hear and tell on him. Rick runs his fingers through Daryl's hair and rests his cheek on the top of his head.

"I know." He whispers back, equally soft. "It'll be over soon, then we can go home and you ain't gotta be afraid no more."

"I ain't afraid of nothin'." But the protest is weak, and Daryl sleeps fitfully that night.

Rick doesn't say a damn thing about it.

*

The house is worse than he'd imagined.

Daryl seems completely unphased, and that's almost worse than seeing the shithole his boyfriend grew up in. The front door's lock is broken, and Daryl knows this before he even tries the handle. Rick is afraid to touch anything, because every surface just seems… sticky. Grimy. Spilt liquor and chewing tobacco mix with smoke and old puke in the air, and he forces himself not to cover his face for Daryl's sake.

Daryl doesn't even seem to smell it as he picks through the rooms of the tiny house carefully, practiced at not stepping on any of the debris of old newspaper and crumpled this-and-that that litters the floor. Inside here is the first place in Georgia that he looks small, and Rick sees him shrink away from certain corners and pieces of furniture like he's afraid of them. He tries not to think about why that might be.

"Pa's." He points to a bedroom with its door hanging off the hinges as he passes it, and Rick glances in. He wishes he hadn't, immediately, because he sees where the puke stink has come from. He shuts the door quietly and follows Daryl, somehow trying to spare him the sight.

"Merle's." That door is shut, and the sign on the door suggests swift death will befall anyone who dares open it.

"Mine." The furthest away from the front door, Daryl's room is also the smallest. When Rick follows him inside, there's barely room for them both to stand on the same side of the mattress.

It's so bare, that's the first thing that really hits Rick about the tiny bedroom. In college, Daryl's apartment is covered in art. He'd got a scholarship, which came with a miniscule apartment attached, and he made the most of the little space he had. Almost every inch of wall was covered in art or posters or flyers from gigs he'd been to. Every foot of space was lived in.

This place didn't look like anyone had ever _lived_ there. Existed, maybe.

The bare walls are discoloured from cigarette smoke, and the plaster is broken in many places from what looks like the impact of fists. The mattress sits on the floor, and the sheets on it look like they've been there since Daryl last rolled out of bed before he went off to college. There are clothes folded in the corner on the scrubby brown carpet, no other furniture in the room except for a reading lamp next to the mattress. It's depressing as hell.

Daryl catches Rick looking with wide eyes and chews on his lip nervously, ducking his head like he's suddenly become aware that his house isn't normal. Like he's embarrassed about someone seeing this part of him. He rubs at the back of his neck self-consciously before he goes over to the pile of clothes and moves them, peeling back the corner of the carpet.

"Jus' couldn't have nothin' in the open." He explains, quietly, as if he's still subconsciously expecting his father to be passed out down the hall. "Pissed the ol' man off, an' I got sick of havin' everythin' broken."

Rick moves closer to look at where Daryl's prying a loose floorboard up, and his heart seems to break and leap at the same time. Daryl pulls out book after book: sketchbooks, textbooks, folders with artwork inside that has been carefully taped back together after it was ripped apart. Daryl looks almost proud as he piles them up by Rick's feet, as if he's proving that he's not really part of this world.

He pauses at a photo album and opens the well-thumbed pages, a little smile coming across his face as he holds the book out to Rick.

"S'my Mom."

Rick takes the book and looks at the picture, a smile growing on his lips as he looks at the old photograph. She looks like Daryl, hair in her eyes and the loose grin he gets when he's truly excited about something on her lips.

"Is that you?" He points at the little blonde boy in her lap and his boyfriend nods.

"Yep. S'me, an' that's Merle, an' that's Pa." He points them all out with the pride of someone who's never shown off a photograph before. "S'my third birthday. Maybe fourth."

"They look happy." Rick comments without thinking, and the smile dips slightly on Daryl's face before he just shrugs.

"They were."

He takes the album back and closes it gently before he adds it to the pile. He rummages under the floorboards to drag out a shoebox of things, and it hits home to Rick that he really hid his whole life down there. There's even an old, raggedy toy squirrel down there, one ear hanging off and stuffing poking through the seam on its belly. Daryl blushes slightly and shoves it inside his jacket, but doesn't leave it behind.

Rick gives him a moment to himself and goes into the kitchen. He hunts out a box to put all the books in, not surprised to see that there's no food in the fridge and the garbage is overflowing with bottles. No wonder his boyfriend hardly ever got drunk, Rick's not sure he'd be able to stomach a drop after growing up like this.

"Kinda sad you're goin' to hell."

Rick pauses outside the door when he hears Daryl muttering. He peeks into the room to see he's got the photo album open again, and Rick can just about see the picture he's talking to. It looks like Merle with twenty years on him, so it must be their father.

"'Cause if you'd gone to heaven, Momma would'a kicked your ass for what you did."

Daryl glares at the picture, before he suddenly rips it out of the book and shoves it back into the hole under the floorboards.

"I ain't afraid of you no more." He whispers, shoving the board back into place and flinging the carpet down on top of it.

Rick takes a few steps back and makes noise before he comes into the room, and Daryl smiles at him shakily when he walks in. He can see the strain is getting to his boyfriend, so they load up the box of Daryl's things and Rick suggests they wait until tomorrow to do the rest.

"Nah, we're done. Let Merle handle it." Rick's surprised by the statement, because he's never heard Daryl disobey his brother so flippantly before. "Ain't nothin' left for me here."

And on the way out to the car, he finally takes Rick's hand.


End file.
